St. Mina Monastery — Attraction in Sofia City

Celebrated my son's baptism at the monastery. Not a great experience. The staff's attitude is a shame for the beautiful place it is. We chose exactly this monastery for a symbolic reason to our family and in the baptism itself we found a spiritual meaning. The attitude we encountered from the staff, however, was, unfortunately, far from spiritual. The entire experience felt like we are put on the conveyor for the modest amount of 150 lv...... As we entered the monastery with all guests and proceeded to notify the lady who booked us in (15 min before the start of the ceremony), we were scolded for being "late" and rushed to the ceremony hall. This was followed by barely any explanation of what we should do with the set up of the things we had brought for the occasion. The entire rushing was only for us to wait for the father for further 10 min until he made an appearance. At the time of booking our appointment, I was given a list of items we should bring for the ritual, none of which was paid attention to at the ritual whatsoever. In a nutshell, I was left with a bitter feeling of the attitude we received. They didn't even care if we left the wine and bread for the monastery or took it with us. I get that it is a popular place for ceremonies but it felt like the monastery rather cares about squishing in as many rituals as they can for the day so that they can receive as much cash as they can rather than allowing enough time for each occasion so that guests do not...

Well, how to review a monastery? I love this place because of the feeling it brings to me. I really feel very strong energy when touching St. Mina's (St. Menas) icon. Otherwise, there's a big garden with benches and green areas. It's very beautiful during spring and summer, because of the flowers and trees.

Otherwise it's quite crowded during the weekend, one could easily spend 2-3 hours waiting waiting at the queue to enter the church or touch the big icon. Thus arrange visiting during work-hours. If you go there make sure you have an empty bottle as there's a fountain of holy water. What else, if you go there using navigation like google maps or similar, look for the Sofia's purifying facility rather than the monastery, since the later has the potential to offer quite strong off-road experience. There's free restroom, but no place to yet any food or drinkable water nearby. During the summer it could stink quite bad, because of the nearby river and...

It's a nice interesting monastery with beautiful garden,worth to visit, located in the middle of nowhere. Although driving there was not easy, it's an adventure driving, from the main road i entered a field, driving 5 or 8 km unpaved, rocky road, lots of big deep portholes, it's raining almost everyday in Bulgaria when i was there, patholes were either full of mud or flooded. When i returned the rented car, the guy from rent a car asked me... if i drove out of the country😄 the car was muddy. I enjoyed my trip to...